


a good bit of trouble

by Ponderosa (ponderosa121)



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bottom Ten, Cunnilingus, Doctorcest (Doctor Who), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gender Identity, Gender Issues, Light Angst, Minor Ninth Doctor/Jack Harkness/Rose Tyler, Minor Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler, Minor Tenth Doctor/The Master (Simm), Minor The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Minor Twelfth Doctor/Missy, Multiple Doctors (Doctor Who), Oral Sex, Pegging, Porn with Feelings, Self-cest, Time Travel Fix-It, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 16:14:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20660063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderosa121/pseuds/Ponderosa
Summary: “I really shouldn’t be here,” the Doctor says, making a face. It’s an apologetic one, she hopes. She tries not to scan about for the old girl with her grungy windows and rickety door looking like it was always one step away from breaking a hinge.“So long as you’re not in any trouble,” he says, peering past her in the direction she’d come from. He tips his head back and she catches herself before she mirrors touching her tongue to the roof of her mouth like he was about to. “You’re not in any trouble are you? I love a good bit of trouble.”





	a good bit of trouble

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to grimdarkfandago for the beta! There aren't any spoilers for any of Thirteen's episodes besides a reference to the origins of her sonic, but then scattered little callbacks throughout for Nine through Twelve. Personal headcanon that this works with my [other Tenth Doctor/Master fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20171464), but also not required reading.

Something has been bothering the Doctor since they landed. For starters, the TARDIS had served up an extra biscuit and then dropped them on the wrong side of the biggest city on Templanus IV. Granted she hasn’t exactly been very keen on landing at the coordinates where she’d been programmed lately. Or attempted to have been programmed. Really, it’s the sonic being glitchy and giving nonsense readings that’ve got the little hairs at the back of the Doctor’s neck standing on end.

She leaves the crew with the crowds at the firejelly festival. She’s seen the launch dozens of times and while it never gets less breathtaking, she can always come back. 

The feeling of wrongness doesn’t get any better as she heads towards the slumbering edges of the cliff houses, where at a certain point in the night the updraft will carry the jellies up, up, up right past your nose. It’s not a danger sort of wrongness but she’s running now anyway, taking corners at a tilt because somewhere very nearby is an answer waiting for the right question.

There are a lot of stairs. A lot. And streets that become narrow and twisty and crowded with the sorts of random bits of _stuff_ that means civilization here is thriving. They’re such good streets to get lost in. The Doctor cracks a smile, her hearts pounding, and then from the other end of town the ripple of cheering begins and she’s too busy looking up and back at a burst of fireworks to watch where her feet take her. 

“Oi! Mind the gap!” An arm catches her briefly at the waist. It’s almost enough to keep her from tumbling off a very abrupt drop, but momentum pitches her forward and spins her around until she’s hanging by her toes with a firm hand clamped at her wrist. When is this planet going to put in some bloody guard rails?

“When will this planet invest in a few safety rails?” she asks. No. _He_ asks. She remembered being a man given that it’d been the bulk of her experience, but odd to recognize now she’d settled in to the new pronouns that when she thought back she still considered her past in the context of her current self. Did they cover this in the Academy? Probably. Probably also shouldn’t have been such a rubbish student. But maybe that was a bit of what the eyebrows were trying to make up for too.

Her thoughts trip over one another until the truly important one falls out of her mouth: “I can’t stay here. I’ve got to go.”

“Ohhh, not down, I hope.” He hauls her back and doesn’t let go until she’s caught her balance. He slings his hands in his pockets--those had been very nice pockets, always full of stuff--and peers out over the edge of the cliff. “That’s a loooong drop. Not easy to come back up from.... Used to be a bridge here!” he says excitedly, nodding at the span of nothingness ahead of them. “Suppose it still exists somewhere down there in significantly tinier pieces.”

“I _really_ shouldn’t be here,” the Doctor says, making a face. It’s an apologetic one, she hopes. She tries not to scan about for the old girl with her grungy windows and rickety door looking like it was always one step away from breaking a hinge.

“So long as you’re not in any trouble,” he says, peering past her in the direction she’d come from. He tips his head back and she catches herself before she mirrors touching her tongue to the roof of her mouth like he was about to. “You’re not in any trouble are you? I love a good bit of trouble.”

“Tell me about it,” the Doctor mumbles. When was this? Why’d the TARDIS bring her here? There’d never been anything nasty on Templanus IV, just the firejellies sailing up into the sky every twenty years. Why’d she have to keep coming back to watch?

“Oh look!” he says, pointing down to the softly pulsing colors of the jellies as they breached the surface. “It’s starting.”

And that…that’s why she keeps coming back. It takes her breath away, every single time. All those precious lifeforms struggling to rise from the depths of an unforgiving sea. And all those countless humans come out to pray for them and feed them and help usher them on their way into the clouds. The rare few, lucky enough to make it out amongst the stars and drift on solar currents, glowing like tiny beacons in the dark of space--

“Beautiful,” he says. “All those precious--”

“I know.... Fed, prayed for, up to the sky and stars,” she says. She’s way ahead of him.

“Tiny little beacons,” he breathes, the wonder in his voice as vast as his smile.

To think she’d ever felt old in that body. She claps her hands together. The view won’t be as good down at the shore, but at least now she knows (probably) why the TARDIS wouldn’t land up here. “Best get going. Nice to meet you. Enjoy the festival. Have a good life-- night-- Nightlife.”

“Forgetting something?” he calls to her retreating back. The Doctor stops and pats her coat, knowing even before she turns what of hers he’s holding.

“Ugh, should’ve put it in my bag! Women’s pockets are rubbish. Never deep enough. Things are always falling out.”

The other Doctor presses his lips together in a smile that dimples his cheeks but doesn’t warm his eyes. He hasn’t worked it out. Not yet, but his brain’s chugging away on it. He waggles her sonic and flips it into the air to catch it again. “Guessing you want this back. Nice design,” he says, examining it before he licks it, twice. “Earth metal! Sheffield steel and a Yorkshire accent to go with it. Very long way from home aren’t you, miss--?”

“Yes and it’s not miss anything. Now hand it over and no more questions. I’ve been here too long already.”

Her younger self looks her up and down and gives in easier than she expects. “If you change your mind _not-miss-anything_, I’ll be here for-- Oh...another two hours or so? Until the jellies go by, anyway,” he says, and holds the sonic out to her.

His fingers glance against hers as she retrieves it. A spark like a current jolts up her arm. He grins at her. He _winks_.

The Doctor opens her mouth and her brows collide in the middle of her forehead, smashing any bit of sense left between them. “Oh, I _was_ a flirt,” she says gobsmacked, giving him a once over in return. And proper skinny. Matchstick skinny. “How did I never realize?

“Oooh, and sentimental fool I am went bottle blonde. This is an homage!” She takes up handfuls of her hair and lets it fall back where it wills. Which is every which way and then some. She spits strands out of her mouth. “This is not something for us to get hot and bothered about-- You...You!”

“Me-me what? Ohhhh no-- Not me...me?” He points at himself with both hands then slowly shifts one hand to point in her direction.

“Yes you-you,” she says, fire in her body from more than just the climb. She points the sonic in the direction of his crotch. “Keep the knickers, Doctor, you’re gonna be wearing ‘em again.”

“I’m not--!”

“Course you aren’t. Not right now. They go with the blue suit. And stop thinking what you’re thinking because I can tell you’re thinking it.”

He pulled a face. “This got awkward fast.” 

“Only on account of you’re still thinking it!”

“I’m not! _Well,_ maybe a bit. _Well,_ maybe more than a bit. It has to make us wonder though: Can’t _really_ be the first time, can it?”

The Doctor thinks about the time stream, about paintings in the National Gallery, about things Sandshoes here doesn’t know yet and things she can’t fully remember. Maybe he’s right. Maybe they _had_ done this before. Oh, the one with the floppy hair got around a lot more than she’d like to admit.

“And don’t you go calling me a flirt. You do remember the last one, don’t you? He started it. Anyway, I wouldn’t put it past us, and I don’t know how long it’s been since….” He gestures between the two of them, at the stretch of long centuries he hasn’t lived yet.

Crossing your own time stream had definitely been covered at the Academy even if the concept of sleeping with one’s regeneration was relegated to thought experiments and philosophy, but she knows having sex with herself isn’t going to crumble the fabric of reality. Not when proof still lingers in her memory by way of the Master wiping his chin off, grinning at her (him) in the weak light of morning and Missy’s coy smile coupled with a couldn’t-help-myself shrug.

Oh, that heartbreak is laying in wait for him twice over. Thrice? It must be well past Canary Wharf or he wouldn’t look at her like he is, but it’s hard to say if this is after that terrible year that never happened or during that long stretch of loneliness before they’d stumbled into Donna again. When the drums were still pounding. All that sorrow and all that hope still to come.

The Doctor’s hearts kicked into high gear again, adrenaline slamming into her veins. She shouldn’t. No.... No! It’s a terrible idea.

She’d played so fast and loose with the past before, she couldn’t do it again. Could she? She’s been trying so very hard to keep conscious of all the Time Lord arrogance etched into her bones. To quit pretending that mucking about willy nilly didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

_Don’t step on any butterfies,_ she tells herself firmly. But she is admittedly curious. Thanks to right now she’d seemingly been giving the idea a lot of thought over the years.

What if she gives this butterfly a teensy nudge? She’d been so close in reaching Missy, she knows it. What if this cocky wounded version of herself--the one who goes on and never gives up on the most wretched version of the Master--comes away from this with enough of a memory to try to love even harder the next time he meets a woman with two hearts thudding in her chest. To not let her slip away into the trees with that other mad, beautiful version of herself.

The Doctor’s younger self can tell that she’s thinking it too, now. “TARDIS is right around the corner,” he says, oh-so-casual. Like he’s not stood there aching to get his mouth between her legs.

Like she doesn’t know how much he loves it, how good (well, presumably…_hopefully!_ good) they’d been at it. How his hair was meant for handfuls and--ooh, the Doctor looks down at herself and then back up at her other self. She hasn’t really thought about sex in this body yet, but now that she has, there’s a certain fiery tingle building up. They’re not so different that way, these two faces of hers, a little bit nasty deep down. No wonder floppy hair protested so much; too afraid to show those ugly corners to any of his companions except, of course, their wife. After Missy, only River carries so many of their secrets sprinkled with her across time.

Will she ever stop being a fool?

“Two hours maximum,” the Doctor says, making what is probably a very stupid choice, but it’s the stupid choice she so desperately wants to make. She strides down the alley with purpose, her ears pricked for the scuffling sound of her younger self kicking off the wall to follow.

He’s caught up to her by the time she’s at the door to the TARDIS and realizing that she doesn’t have a key on her. She places a hand to the wood, wondering if it’ll just open and welcome her in, and she smiles softly when the latch gives. His arm slides past her to help push the door open, his breath stirring her hair as he says, “I hope you haven’t redecorated.” A ripple like the leading edge of a wildfire sears across her skin.

She doesn’t answer, but she does take a good look around as she steps in. She’d loved this design.

“Fourth bedroom on the left?” they ask each other, and then that’s where they’re off to. He sheds his duster and leaves it somewhere along the way, and she hops past the threshold on one foot as she yanks her boots off.

She’s not sure which of them grabs the other by the face first, but then they’re colliding together, giddy and kissing. “Promise me,” the Doctor says, when they eventually come up for a breath. Her thumbs press hard at the cut of her old cheekbones. “Promise us. The next time you meet someone like me, you’ll do everything you can to save her.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, eyebrow arching upwards.

“Just promise,” the Doctor says, and pulls his hand to the center of her chest, to feel the drum of her heart.

He looks down at her hand over his, and she knows he recognizes how important this will be to them. “I promise,” he says.

“Good,” she says, her fingers curling tight around his. “Now, you really want to eat me out, don’t you?”

“Oh, you know I do,” he breathes, and grins as she leads him towards the bed. She plops down on it and their fingers get all tangled up in trying to get the braces off her shoulders at the same time so she pauses and lets him take care of it. The memory of hooking eager hands into Jack’s braces would be so much fresher for him, and maybe it’s reassuring, she thinks when their eyes lock, to know that she still remembers how good it had been with him and Rose, how those two had lightened their soul in those awful years.

She bites her lip before she can say anything. It won’t matter if she tells him he didn’t do the thing he thinks. He’ll never believe her. And she can’t risk granting temporary absolution if she wants him to bury some vague hint of the Master’s future inside him. Not when after she’s gone the time stream will try its hardest to rip that promise away. She can’t meddle too much. She has to keep it simple. “Everything’s new still when it comes to this,” she says, wriggling her way up the bed until she’s up against the pillows. She strips off her top as he starts on her trousers. “I don’t know yet what I like.”

“That’ll take a whole lot more than two hours,” he says, loosening his tie. His fingers make quick work of the buttons of his shirt. He has such clever fingers; she misses those hands and their little manly hairs on the back that definitely hadn’t been trying to compensate for how slim and soft the fingers were. The faint hairs on her new hands don’t know how to sense much of anything yet.

She strips the tie from him, rolls it neatly and sets it aside so it doesn’t get cast onto the floor. “I can’t. I’ve got three with me. They’ll worry if I’m gone for too long.”

“Three,” he says, eyes widening. “Getting greedy in our old age, are we?”

“It’s not like that.” But maybe it is. Already, she wants to keep them with her for as long as possible. Her brilliant friends. Her new little family.

He doesn’t push it. Maybe because he’s jealous. Or maybe because he’s just discovered she’s wearing boxers.

“Okay, so maybe you don’t need to keep the knickers,” she says with a little huff. She could’ve gone on, reiterated that this body is still so new, only months not years with it for her to understand what comfortable means, but all of that is lost on a gasping inhale when he slides a hand up into the leg of her boxers. His knuckles graze against her vulva as he hooks the crotch of her pants to pull them down. She loses her breath just as fast as she lifts her hips, knees twisting to kick free of the last bit of clothing clinging to her, then feeling oddly self-conscious when he studies her.

With most of her regenerations this would’ve been a competition. Now it’s something else. And it comes with a gnawing feeling that she wouldn’t expect to feel this way in front of any other person in the universe, not even those other selves. And what did that say about her and him and the stumbling mistakes they’ve made between then and now. 

“Quit staring! Another thousand some-odd years and you can look all you want.”

His gaze jumps up to hers. He looks as if he’s about to say something. To ask the questions that are rattling around in that too-pretty head of his. Instead, he sucks two of his fingers wet and watches her face as he slides them inside her.

She’s embarrassed. And that only makes it more embarrassing. The things he’s done--snogged a Zygon for starters!--she’s the last one to be judging, and yet she’s the one whose face is turning hot and who has to look away when he puts his mouth to where she’s tight and aching.

Oh, but they _are_ good at this. At least she thinks this is what good feels like. Is it good? Is good the needy sizzle up her spine and her limbs turning tingly. Is it her hips straining off the bed and her mouth open on a soundless moan. Or is it the hungry twist near her hearts and her hands slid into his hair to hold him in place at the peak of her thighs so she can fuck herself against his tongue.

Is she even doing this right? He’s got his lips around her clit now, sucking and oh, it’s strange to not be able to pull back, to watch herself slide into his mouth. Strange to be stroked on the inside at the same time and know she’s got another hole to be filled if she wants. Her heel kicks out on a hard shiver.

Three companions fresh after losing Bill, after letting Missy go…. How can she be anything else other than greedy in this regeneration?

“Wait,” she says, gasping, hauling his head away from her when he’s reluctant to stop. “Get on your back.”

He scrapes his teeth over his lip. “Not a fan?” he asks, but he does as she tells him and flops back down beside her. He’s still got half his clothes on, the waist of his trousers settled low on his hips, shirt open but caught partway to his elbows. The shelf of his ribs rise and fall with each rapid breath he takes.

“I think we like it, but I’m still not sure yet,” she says, and climbs right on top of him, legs trapping his arms, knees crushing the pillow on either side of his head. “Do know that you like this,” she says, grinning down at him as she lowers herself back to his mouth to grind against the eager curl of his tongue.

He makes a sound that hums right through her, and the muscles of his arms flex. She can’t help but laugh knowing how very much he wants to get a hand on his cock, to toss off while she sits on his face. She doesn’t let him, she curls over him, cradles her hands at the back of his head and rocks herself over his clever mouth until things get so messy he needs to swallow again and again.

The first time the Doctor tastes herself, it’s on his lips, sucking on his tongue--raw from being thrust up into her, from flicking at her, from tracing their own name in endless circles. She lays down beside him with her cunt still spasming and kisses him until her own tongue is scraped and stinging.

He’s got a fist on his cock, the heat of it bumping against her thigh as his knuckles brush across her skin. She replaces his hand with hers, learns what it’s like from the wrong direction, and they’re nose to nose and starting to laugh a bit at how wildly absurd it is to be here together.

“Are you happy?” he asks, when the laughter sinks into the weight of all the words left unsaid. His fingers touch light at her wrist telling her to stop, if only for a moment.

She thinks it over, trying to find the best way to answer. “There are more good days than there are bad,” she says, and when she slips away to rise from the bed, he reaches for her. “I’m not leaving. I’ve still got an hour.”

“Forty-three minutes, but who’s counting.”

“Where’s the--” she twirls around, looking for the big red chest with its shiny brass latches. “Found it!”

“Ohh,” he says, knowing now what’s she’s going for. He shucks off his trousers and sits up, one gangly arm draped over the fold of his knee. “You’re spoiling me. Makes me wonder why.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” the Doctor says, then pauses to wonder if there’s another way to phrase that. She can’t think of one, so continues rummaging through the trunk. “I don’t have any other option than to accessorize, and I _really_ want to fuck you.”

“If that’s the case, that makes two of us.”

She finds the device wedged near the back of the trunk, underneath a pile of belts and hoses and devices that she can’t even remember where she’d picked up. She hops up with a floppy fleshy disc in her palm and pushes the little lump stamped with the acronym SAPS. “Ooh, still works!” she says, and nearly drops the self-adhering phallic simulator as a wobbly green appendage starts to materialize faster than expected. “Oh, but, it’s set to Alpha Centauran. That’s a no thank you.”

From the corner of her eye she catches her younger self shrug.

She raises an eyebrow and says nothing else as she grabs her coat and digs out the sonic to switch the setting on the SAPS to something more Time Lord shaped. It morphs through a dozen appendages until she finds one that’s close enough in a lovely shade of teal. Holding it with both hands at the base, she sets the SAPS in place, a sound startled out of her as it suctions itself to her skin. She bounces on her heels a few times and it jiggles but holds in place.

She tucks her hair behind her ears and feels strangely embarrassed again. Does he think she regrets their new body? She doesn’t except maybe for the legs and she had Ryan now to fetch things off high shelves. She’s pretty sure she won’t mind not having a cock in the long run--definitely doesn’t mind not having the rest of the dangly bits--and tries to leave the uncomfortable squirming in the back of her mind where it belongs as she returns to the bed. There were more deserving things to give her attention to, like the waves of naked want that pour from her younger self. He’s already slicked himself wet, and he spreads his knees for her, eager to welcome her back, warm eyes going dark and heavy-lidded as she crawls up and over him.

They’d always loved the weight of body on top of them, and she thinks she still might. But when she’d been him, she’d particularly enjoyed it when that pressing weight came with the push of flesh between her legs, the stretch to take in a lover that always felt like too much at first. She tries to make it good, holding the tip of her cock firmly in place as he lifts his hips to match the angle.

Strange to see the play of sensation cross his face from this side, to be able to catalog what he’s feeling and recall the echo of it. The way his jaw shifts to gnaw lightly at his cheek as she fills him, and then the way his mouth goes briefly slack when she’s in to the hilt and he’s adjusted to the stretch. The thrill once he realizes that she’s got nothing more to give and the grin that comes with a spreading glow that works it way up from his belly to saturate the whole of his chest when she starts to move inside him.

She feels it all second-hand, a muted, wondrous pleasure like the way the very base of the SAPS presses against her clit as she fucks him. She thought she might find it frustrating to use something that didn’t provide direct feedback, but it’s still deliciously satifying to pull back and fuck into him hard enough to push a gasp out of the long stretch of his throat. If anything it makes her fuck him harder, her clit straining for every brush against the soft base of her cock.

It’s dizzying having new little memories threading their way into her brain. The way she looks on top of herself and the soft push of her breasts against the flat of her chest. The way her hair slips free until it’s shivering with each thrust and how she licks the corner of her mouth when she’s catching her breath before she starts up again, relentless. How fucking good it feels to have someone who isn’t afraid to break her.

To have someone who will grip her hard by the chin and twist hard fingers into her, to drag a lick up her cheek and bite her earlobe so hard it stings for days. To laugh when she begs to come, so hard she’s aching for it, but then to be embraced after, fingers combing through her curls, words that might be ‘I’ll always love you, Doctor’ mouthed against her sweat-damp temples.

She hangs her head, forcing herself to separate the past from the present, to pull away from the clinging threads of time and hang on to _now_. To this moment where she’s so close to coming again, and he’s--

Oh, he’s had at least one fucked out of him already, his cock slippery between them. She pushes up to her wrists, rolls her hips a little more to pack a little extra punch behind each thrust. If only she hadn’t put a time limit on this, if only she could spend a whole day in bed with herself, come again and again and roll away to let him crawl back and taste her when she’s so wet she’s dripping down her leg.

He’s dazed and grinning at her, limbs pliant and hair mussed as she goes up on her heels and rocks against him. His back skids against the sheets as she grinds into him so hard it lifts his hips straight off the mattress. Sweat gleams beneath the scatter of hair on his chest. Now it gathers under her breasts and at the small of her back. When she puts out a hand and he welcomes the slide of her fingers into the softness of his mouth, they both shudder.

She comes with a quiet cry, a sound that’s hardly more than a gasp. And she thinks she might keep going, to let him push through one more himself, but then he’s gathering her wrist in his hand to press a kiss into her palm and then drawing her down and kissing the rise of her cheek, her jaw, and when their lips brush open and sticky, they share only breath. Gently, he tucks the hair back behind her ear and she knows in her gut that they’ve peeled back enough layers of one other that any further and they risk tumbling into ruin.

Somewhat reluctantly, she pulls out and detaches the cock, tossing the disk towards the foot of the bed as she settles beside him again and props her head in the crook of her arm. She studies the freckles scattered across his face, matching them to constellations. He turns his neck to look at her, an eyebrow arching as he asks, “So, how are we at...?” and flicks a meaningful gaze down the line of her body.

“Bit of all right, I guess,” she says, but she only lasts a dozen heartbeats before she can’t keep from bragging. “Oh, we’re good. Really, really good.”

His head drops back to the pillow with a light laugh. “All I really wanted to know.”

“My time’s up, isn’t it.” She’d stopped counting, but he wouldn’t have.

“Is mine?”

She guides his hand back to the center of her chest again and drops a kiss on the tip of his nose. “No,” she says, and slips out of bed before she can convince herself to stay another hour.

“Back to your three?” he asks, watching her dress.

“Not quite. Last few jellies will still be passing by, won’t they?” she says, and tosses his trousers at him. “Come on now. Stand with me.”

“I won’t remember it,” he reminds her, but he throws his clothes back on anyway.

“I will,” she says, and holds out her hand for him to take.


End file.
